Notice Anything Different on your Google Search Results Page?

Google has made yet another update to the way your page displays when you do a Google search. Despite calling the new design an experiment, Google officially changed the look of its search results for Google users far and wide.  Amit Singhal, SVP, Google Search announced that a change was coming in September 2013, starting with mobile search results.

The Google AdWords section is most notably the biggest change. No longer using a shaded light yellow background behind the Ads, the new style removes the shaded background and adds a small yellow “Ad” marker next to the URL along with an underline, which separates the Ads from the organic search results.

The other main differences are that Google changes the font and removes underlines from links. The updated headlines are larger, the description text shaded lighter and the fonts have a wider typeface.

You might be asking yourself, what does this mean to me and my search results?

Aside from the formatting makeover, the new layout allows for about 59-60 characters instead of the maximum 70 prior to change. This means that current website page titles may need to be re-formatted so that they don’t lose momentum in the rankings. Such a loss could negatively impact click-through rates to your site.

Even though the new layout has received much backlash from desktop users, Google claims that the new change was made for improved readability and to create a cleaner design. Thus, the updates that are made on mobile and tablets, have been carried over to create consistency for several different devices.  Mashable has some good screen shots included in their blog post on this topic.

Only time will tell if the new change will stick, but for now the change is here to stay.